The Northern Virginia Daily

February 26, 2010

Royal Phoenix restrictions blocking satellite campus

By Ben Orcutt

FRONT ROYAL -- Plans to have James Madison University operate a satellite campus in Front Royal have been put on hold.

Jennifer McDonald, executive director of the Front Royal-Warren County Economic Development Authority, said Thursday that the Harrisonburg university cannot hold classes at Royal Phoenix because of restrictions on what is allowed at the site of the Avtex Superfund cleanup.

"It says in that restricted covenant that you cannot have a school on the site," McDonald said. "We have to get permission from all of the stakeholders before anything happens here. So when we sent out a notice asking for permission for that to be located here, one of the stakeholders, in his mind, JMU was considered a school."

McDonald did not identify the stakeholder, but said that the person was trying to be helpful.

"They just pointed it out to protect everybody," she said.

In addition to the EDA, the town and Warren County, McDonald said the stakeholders include the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, FMC, Valley Conservation, Lord Fairfax Soil and Water and the trustee, Anthony Murray.

The original plan, McDonald said, was for JMU to offer an adult degree program, with classes twice a week, from 6 to 9 p.m. McDonald believes the details can still be worked out so that the adult classes can take place, but first the town has to define what a school is.

"It's still going to happen," McDonald said of the original plan. "We just have to define the code and submit that to EPA and Department of Justice and see if they define it the same way we do. They're still going to be here. They're going to be here offering seminars, which may count towards something at a later date. So we're still getting them. It's just we have to wait a little bit longer to get the classes here."

McDonald said the EDA hopes that JMU will begin holding the seminars at Royal Phoenix in the summer or fall.

Town Manager J. Michael Graham, a 1977 JMU graduate and an advisory board member of the school of public administration, said in the town's mind, the satellite program that JMU wants to locate at Royal Phoenix is not a school as defined under the current town code, "which we feel really pertains to a K-12 school and not really attributed to these educational remote courses."

Graham said Front Royal wants to more clearly define what schools are being talked about with regard to potential changes to town code.